You have 30 minutes: Where would you hide a USB drive from the FBI?

[scavengerspc]

I absolutely follow the law. Well, for the most part. I could be accused of partying to hardy on many occasions. I usually got a ride or called a taxi\Uber, but admittedly not always.

So give me a good reason to see the drive, and I would give it to them.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Thinking a little harder, since we have 30 minutes, I'd simply encrypt the data and upload it to the cloud then destroy the USB drive...

 

[Faraday]

Here are some ideas

1: I would hide the drive in the same place that I hid it the last time the feds showed up to search my house.
2: Inside a sealed ESD bag, in the false bottom of a sealed jar of peanut butter.
3: Inside a sealed maxi-pad envelope, inside a sealed box of pads
4: In a recess behind a wall safe that is bolted to the studs

 

[Jakeman]

I would tape it inside of the underwear I have on. I see all kinds of shows with search warrants and they never check the person. They only check the property

 

[SirPablo]

1. Decoy USB in the aquarium — leads them nowhere or contains encrypted garbage.
2. Real drive in a vent in another room or deeper duct section.

 

[hahahanoobs]

In a wall.

 

[imdarkbreeze]

I'd have nothing to hide so I wouldn't worry about it, however, if perhaps under a different scenario lets say a friend suddenly entrusted me with one and claimed it had important data on it and "bad actors" were trying to find it I'd do as follows.

Remove the lower half of one of my gutter downspouts on the back of the house. Tape the USB drive as far up inside the remaining half of the downspout as I could reasonably reach without slicing my arm to pieces. Reinstall the lower half of the downspout. Nobody is going to be looking in your gutter downspout for anything I'm pretty sure. And even if they walked the property with dogs trained to sniff out electronics, with it halfway up the downspout the chances are very good a dog isn't going to smell it even if they smell the outlet on the downspout.

 

[Subset6]

Clearly the best answer is in the trash but broken up into several pieces so the FBI can search the local landfill until the end of time like that poor bastard that lost millions of dollars of bitcoin.

 

[unoficialoficial]

 

[Antias]

I'd wrap it in bacon and feed it to my dog (who practically inhales the stuff, forget chewing...)
It'd take a lot longer than 30 min for him to poop it out. And lets face it, if your hiding something from the Fed's, then your not likely tro be squeemish about retrieving it...

 

[FaTaL]

My azz

 

[bclaymiles]

I doubt the warrant will cover a cavity search..

Just saying.

If the warrant is specifically searching for said USB drive, you better believe a cavity search will be included!

There's all sorts of great ideas for where to hide things, particularly tiny things like the Sandisk 'ultra fit', barely larger than the USB port itself - but, revealing your awesome hiding place just adds it to the toolkit for the snoopers to remember to look through...

 

[pnntmp]

I'll upload the content somewhere (if I care about it) and then drop it in the toilet and flush several times.

 

[mbk34]

Thinking a little harder, since we have 30 minutes, I'd simply encrypt the data and upload it to the cloud then destroy the USB drive...

I was going to say exactly the same thing. Perhaps also change the file type and name to something innocuous. If the site keeps deleted files for so many days then you could then delete it so it doesn't show up in ordinary listings (but you might want to check with a less sensitive file first).

 

[mgwerner]

Toss it in loose in a bin of Lego. I have a lot of large bins of Lego.

 

[DukeJukem]

The police station

 

[OortCloud]

I wouldn't hide them anywhere. The FBI are welcome to waste their time looking at my Windows installation media, steam library, photos and old backups of junk I'll probably never look at again.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Ffs all my ideas have been taken!

 

[candle86]

That's incredibly easy and been used by criminals before, im simply going to mail it to myself, ive got 30 minutes I toss it in a padded envelope, my name on it, postage paid, and drop it in a mailbox, it will come back to me in 2 days.


As for hiding it inside, in the US A warrant to search for a USB Stick means they are legally allowed to look anywhere a USB stick could be concealed and depending on how bad they want it, they will gut your house looking for it, they will tear apart everything inside even if it takes them days they will, dunno about other countries but here in the US they can search anything that might be possible to conceal a USB Stick and there isn't a time limit on how long they can search.

 

[Chadeuk]

Upload the contents of the drive to remote storage using a neighbours WiFi, then format the drive and fill it with memes and let them find it.

 

[mass Transit]

Encrypt the data. Use steganography to embed it in an image file. Upload the image file. Destroy the drive. You could probably even keep the image file on your phone. Stegenography is very hard to detect if used correctly.

 

[DrSuess]

I would hide it inside the cottage cheese in the fridge. Slide in the to cottage cheese and then smooth it over a bit to make it look like it had be used recently.

 

[Lew Zealand]

A 10 minute drive away.

 

[human7]

I'm sure someone from the FBI is saying: Thanks for all the ideas guys!

The problem with the 4d chess approach (leaving it in plain sight) is that the FBI doesn't have a time limit, they can just search every USB they find, which would definitely include anything in plain sight. They might keep looking for a hidden one, but eventually they'd know they have the real thing. Disguising it as a non-USB bit of electronics might work, but I suspect the FBI would search all of that eventually, too. If I'm the FBI and can't find the specific USB on site, then I would take all the electronics I can find back to a lab for further scrutiny, so if the USB is among that, it would be discovered.

Despite being outside the scope of the question, the "not on my property" or destruction answers are probably the best real world answers. You would have to be careful with somewhere else though: you don't want to tip off the FBI that they need a warrant for your friend's house or wherever else.

Places I thought about include:
1. Somewhere in the attic insulation (would be discovered by someone using a metal detector up there)
2. Inside the water heater (where the insulation is) or some other appliance, but I suspect the FBI would search through all the appliances anyways
3. Inside a sink drain or toilet tank, those are commonly searched areas though
4. Taped inside an outlet or light switch, also commonly searched areas

 

[Kwerpi]

The best place is outside the house. They may search the entire house, but not its surroundings.

If my mailbox is part of a shared mailbox outside my property, could they search that?

My real entry is stuffing/taping it inside the AC condenser drip tube. Turn off the AC or put in a small plastic bag to prevent water damage.